The Collapse
Before October 2023, Gaza had 36 functioning hospitals. Fewer than a dozen operate today, and most only partially.
According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, the organization has not been able to bring a single medical supply into Gaza since January 1, 2026. Nearly half of essential chronic medications are critically low. Diabetes treatments. Hypertension medication. Asthma inhalers. All running out. MSF has already stopped accepting new patients to its non-communicable disease services.
“Not being able to provide proper care,” the organization warns, “will inevitably lead to the preventable deaths of patients.”
And yet, the doctors remain.
Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar
On the morning of May 23, 2025, Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar left for work at Al-Tahrir Hospital in Khan Younis. Her husband returned home. Minutes later, an Israeli airstrike hit their house.
Nine of her children were killed. The eldest was 12. The youngest was six months old.
Her husband died of his wounds a week later.
Dr. Alaa returned to work. She is a pediatrician. The children of Gaza still need her.
Fayza Shreim, Um Saleh
At 65, Fayza Shreim has not stopped working. She has been displaced 13 times. She lost her pregnant daughter, seven months along, and two grandchildren in a single airstrike. Two of her sons were later killed. Her sons-in-law, too.
She still delivers babies.
“I deliver them in shelters, schools, and tents,” she told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “To leave women alone during childbirth would be a crime against humanity.”
One night, she delivered twins inside an ambulance while shelling continued around them. Roads were filled with shrapnel. The ambulance was being targeted. Both mother and twins survived.
“When I hear that cry,” she said, “I forget the sound of the bombing.”
Dr. Nawal Asqoul
In a small room under her partially destroyed home in Khan Younis, Dr. Nawal Asqoul runs a mental health clinic for children. No funding. No official support. A few chairs and a box of crayons.
She treats nearly 300 children. Children who have stopped speaking. Who wet themselves in terror. Who draw tanks instead of trees.
One boy, Anas, was asked to draw what scares him. His paper came back with a single image: a large tank. “That’s all that remains in his memory of displacement,” she said.
Another child, Mira, had turned the sound of rockets into constant panic. After sessions with Dr. Asqoul, her mother said she started talking again. Started playing again. “She got back part of the safety she lost.”
Dr. Asqoul’s words: “We are like the phoenix. Every time we burn, we are born again.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. On December 27, 2024, Israeli forces raided the hospital. He was detained and has been held without charge for over 17 months.
Amnesty International and UN experts have called for his release, citing concerns over his conditions of detention. No public charges have been filed. His whereabouts remain unknown.
What They Endure
A cross-sectional study published in June 2026 surveyed 437 physicians and nurses working in Gaza’s major hospitals.
74 percent reported poor sleep quality. Nearly 59 percent showed signs of moderate or severe psychological distress.
There is no one to replace them.
What You Can Do
Demand the release of detained medical workers. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has been held without charge for over 17 months. Write to your government. Call for his release or for a transparent legal process.
Support MSF, UNFPA, and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. These organizations are still on the ground. MSF cannot get new supplies in. They need political pressure to open the crossings.
Share their names. Dr. Alaa. Fayza. Dr. Nawal. Dr. Hussam. The world must know who stayed.
A Last Word
The doctors of Gaza did not choose to be heroes. They chose to be healers in a place where healing has become an act of survival.
They deliver babies in ambulances under fire. They treat their neighbors’ children hours after burying their own. They work until their bodies break, then work some more.
Fayza Shreim said it best: “Life has to go on. Even if all of Gaza is bleeding.”
She is still bleeding. She is still delivering life.
Yafa Relief funds medical supplies and direct stipends for healthcare workers still serving in Gaza. Every contribution keeps a clinic open and a worker paid.
Donate at yafarelief.org